


Going Gray

by deliverusfromsburb



Series: Tuesjade Prompts [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Rose and Jade just hang out and it's nice ok, TLC compliant, postgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 21:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12897147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb
Summary: tuesjade prompt response for: hairdye





	Going Gray

**Author's Note:**

> tuesjade-hq is a thing and I am slowly moving my responses to their prompts over here to attempt to address the distressing lack of Jade on Homestuck a03

Sharing a bathroom with a crowded household is never easy, especially when some people take their time. Dirk is the worst – he once spent over an hour fixing his hair until Roxy pounded on the door and yelled “I gotta PISS, Strider!!” so loudly Jaspers tried to squeeze himself under your bed. Jade’s usually in and out – a quick hairbrushing makes up the bulk of her regimen – so when she shuts herself up in the bathroom for a while, you check on her.  
  
There’s no lock on the door – everyone decided that was for the best – so you knock and then walk in when she doesn’t tell you not to. (You would even if she did, except then you might have hurried.)  
  
“Hi, Rose,” she says, not looking away from the mirror. You’re still getting used to the way she knows who’s entered a room by their scent or the feel of how space bends around them. It’s the kind of power you would use to annoy or unsettle people, but she’s matter-of-fact about it. “I’m trying to check something out, but I can’t see well. Will you look at my hair for me?”  
  
Jade’s hair hasn’t grown back yet from the haircut Jack started and you finished. With the weight of its length gone, it has sprung into a looser version of the curls Jane no longer relaxes. You walk up behind her, wondering if she wants you to say she needs a trim. But when you’re closer, looking down on the top of her head as she leans against the counter, you see it.  
  
“I think the color’s going-” she starts, and you finish.  
  
“Gray.”  
  
Jade blows a breath out from puffed cheeks, clouding the mirror. “Is that bad?”  
  
“It happened to me.”  
  
She straightens up, almost clipping you in the chin. “Really?”  
  
“Not all over, just here and there. It wore off eventually, although I think I have a bit left.” You catch some of your hair and roll the strands between your fingers, looking for a gleam of silver. “It wasn’t as visible as it is for you.”  
  
Jade gingerly touches the top of her head, where some of her roots are growing in pale. “Because of what happened to you with the horrorterrors?”  
  
You nod. “Channeling powers we weren’t prepared to on our own, I think, overstretching ourselves. It stayed even though I wasn’t in the same body anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jane had some too.”  
  
“Poor Jane.” Jade shakes her head. “At least I didn’t have a robot in my brain.”  
  
“I wasn’t like either of you,” you say. “Nothing made me do anything wrong. But the power… they did give me that.” Everything seems so simple with power at your command. The distance between a problem and the solution is a straight line. You catch yourself that way still sometimes, your mind a straightedge, powering off in one direction as soon as you even think you’ve caught sight of your destination. When it had come time to rewrite the universe, you’d been tempted to make it your idea of perfect. The Light part of you wants to see reality labeled and pinned to a card, but it can’t live then. “You can get carried away.”  
  
“Or get even.” Jade shrugs when you look at her. “That’s what it was for me. I’m not pretending it wasn’t.”  
  
“The cliché is power corrupts. Do you think any of us would be able to resist the One Ring?”  
  
Jade purses her lips. “In the story, the hobbits did best. Who’s shortest?”  
  
“You think moral superiority lies within those closer to the ground?”  
  
“Do you have a better theory?”  
  
Someone knocks on the door, and both of you jump. “There’s more than one bathroom in the house, you know,” you call.  
  
“This one’s closest,” John complains from the other side of the door. “Besides, I was checking to make sure everyone was still alive in there.”  
  
Jade rolls her eyes. After six years, the two of them have finally learned to stop being so careful and talk to each other like normal siblings. Now, you think they enjoy their squabbles. “You’re too late. We’re dead.”  
  
“Let me know if you need any help with that,” he says, and you hear him amble off.  
  
“You could dye the gray parts,” you say, returning to the subject at hand – or at head. “Most of mine grew out in a few months. Or you could make it part of your “look”. Call it silver instead of gray – that sounds more Romantic, the kind with a capital R. Black and silver, night and starlight, that sort of thing.”  
  
“Oh Rose,” she teases, “that’s almost poetic.”  
  
“I try.”  
  
“Have you ever thought about dying yours?” she asks. “It’s so light, it should take color well.”  
  
“I thought about it a few times,” you admit, “but if I had my mother would’ve gotten me a junior beautician’s set before it dried. That’s what happened with the lipstick.” You’d worn black to shock her, but she’d taken it as an opportunity to try to bond and unloaded most of a Sephora counter on you, which you’d used to make a self-portrait entitled Masque of the Beauty Industry – Female Socialization into Self-Objectification. The juvenile games you played with your mother are embarrassing now. She’d been trying to make up for her excesses with more, and you responded to imagined slights by lashing out. You’d both acted like children, even if you thought you were so mature. “Do you think I’d look good with purple hair?”  
  
Jade claps her hands together. “Let’s find out!”

 

A packet of Kool-Aid later, you’re dripping whorls of purple into the bathtub. Jade examines her fingers, where the dye has left her dark skin looking corpse gray. “Gross hands and zebra hair,” she says with a laugh. “I can be the bride of Frankenstein.”  
  
“Frankenstein’s monster,” you correct, because it’s expected."  
  
“All in all, I’d prefer to be the scientist.”  
  
The dye has to sit overnight, so you seclude yourselves in Jade’s room. She guards the door from any unauthorized entry, shooing Kanaya away by telling her you’re preparing a surprise and whacking anyone who tries to phase through the wall with a pillow. Dave restrains himself to sending you 27 texts in a row before you turn your phone off. The two of you eat sour gummy worms by the fistful and look up silly animal videos. Jade has to drag you away from an argument in the Youtube comments section. She shows you pictures of dresses she likes, and you argue over which model is prettier. You feel like the child you could have been, if you’d ever dared to bring a friend home to spend the day or sleep over, if you’d ever let yourself relax into your youth instead of chasing your mother’s missing adulthood.  
  
It’s nice.  
  
The two of you fall asleep on the floor despite your sugar intake, and you wake up to see that you’ve left a purple stain on the carpet. “It’ll wash out,” Jade assures you. “We need to rinse your hair now.”  
  
It looks terrible - a streaky mess of light and dark purple – but Jade guides you away from brooding in the mirror and shoves you into the shower. Then the color evens out. It’s a little darker than the lavender you would’ve preferred, but Kool-Aid dyes fade fast. You run your hands over it long enough that she asks, “Do you not like it?”  
  
“What do you think everyone else will say?”  
  
“That you look pretty.” That’s Jade, delivering all her assurances with conviction. Even though you know now some of them were feigned, she sounds sincere. “They’ll love it.”  
“Have you decided what you’re going to do about yours?”  
  
She touches her roots, where the gray is just starting to show. “I think I’ll leave it. I’ve covered up enough. Hopefully Jake won’t think I’m his grandma.”  
  
“You’re a few wrinkles short.”  
  
“Memory is funny sometimes. The littlest things throw me. He coughs just like my grandpa used to. I hear it and always have to turn around.” She tugs out one strand that’s gone completely gray, wraps it a few times around her finger, and ties it off. “A reminder,” she says. “Even if I don’t need them anymore.”

 

Jade has to coax you downstairs, but eventually you both walk down to the kitchen. Terezi, who against all prior behavior has chosen today to get up before noon, sniffs. “Does anyone smell anything different?” You make a slashing motion across your throat, (she sticks her tongue out), but the damage is done. Karkat nudges Dave, who looks up at you and chokes on his coffee. Kanaya’s eyebrows rise, and words line up on your tongue. It’s childish. A joke. It’ll wash right out.  
  
“I think it suits you,” she says.  
  
“Forget Rose,” Roxy says. “Who’ll turn my hair pink for me?”  
  
“My hands are already ruined,” Jade says, holding them up.  
  
Roxy high-fives her, to her surprise. “Perfect. But I want a turn at the exclusive sleepover times. Except with 100% more science. I’m talking bubbly rainbow shit in beakers, the whole shebang.”  
  
“Am I on the ban list for this round?” you ask. If there’s one thing you can count on Roxy for, it’s lightening the mood. “I may not be part of the scientific community, but I can be present to scoff at mankind’s fumbling attempts to comprehend the mysteries of the universe.”  
  
“That’s why you have to leave those kinds of probing questions into the fabric of reality to womankind. You can stay if…” Roxy pauses for dramatic effect. “You let me do your nails.”  
  
“Roxy, do you know how to do anyone’s nails?” Jane demands from across the table.  
  
“I’m a fast learner. Or… you could hold a workshop.” She waggles her unmanicured fingers at her. “Wanna volunteer?”  
  
“I’d love to see how it’s done,” Calliope chimes in.  
  
Kanaya raises her hand. “I’d like to be included in this, whatever it is.”  
  
“Massive all-girls sleepover, that’s what it is. Or what it’s turning into. You can’t come,” Roxy adds to Dirk, who looks like he’s trying to decide whether to be disappointed or not.  
  
The table dissolves into chatter, and you shake your head. “The last time I even heard the word sleepover, I must have been eleven. It always seemed like kid stuff.”  
  
“I know,” Roxy says, and raises her hand to high-five you too. You meet her hand with a decisive clap. “Isn’t it great?”


End file.
